The COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage our lives through diminished social contact, disrupted commerce and illness and death. One unobvious example has been interruptions in food supply chains, from farmers’ markets to large food manufacture...
19 January, 2021 | Henry Miller, M.S., M.D.
The Van Jones backstory. So Van Jones now takes his place as the Lani Guinier of the Obama administration, undone by his radical views. Like Guinier, the ousted “green jobs” czar will doubtless employ his political martyrdom to transform ...
14 September, 2009 | Steven F. Hayward
No one who is younger than 40 will remember the late legendary radio commentator Paul Harvey. Every afternoon, he would begin his daily radio program by promising to tell us “the rest of the story.” Thanks to a provision slipped into a budget traile...
23 February, 2021 | Tim Anaya
California’s Assembly Bill 5 has not been broken, but given a couple of recent developments, it might soon be showing some cracks. On May 20, Assembly Bill 1850, which would exempt some professions from AB5, a law that virtually outlaws independent c...
02 June, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
With California losing a seat in the U.S. House because due to its flat population growth, maybe Sacramento should try to convince Washington to count robots as residents in the next census. Because they’re on their way. In the first nine months of 2...
06 December, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
That’s what Pres. Trump said in a tweet on the record-shattering $2 trillion phase 3 stimulus package. Right by the Bay doesn’t question the need for government to step up to help the economy get through the coronavirus pandemic. But even during thi...
31 March, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
Can Trump yank GM’s electric vehicle tax credit? By Rachel Layne On Tuesday, President Donald Trump vented his anger at General Motors after the company announced several plant closings and more than 14,000 layoffs. The president threatened to elimin...
30 November, 2018 | Pacific Research Institute
Jerry Brown was tagged with the nickname “Gov. Moonbeam” while in office during the 1970s and 1980s. It was a fitting handle, because he was an unorthodox politician who represented the state’s increasingly curious behavior. Now in his second life as...
29 September, 2017 | Kerry Jackson
The Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee has just released a bi-partisan bill authored by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) that would make health care more affordable and more transparent for patients...
29 May, 2019 | Wayne Winegarden
Thanks to Trump’s corporate tax cut, companies have become, well, more enterprising. Where a 31 percent federal tax rate ruled out many new ventures, a 21 percent tax rate makes them far more viable. So, it’s no surprise that state officials have be...
15 March, 2018 | Rowena Itchon
During my past life at the State Capitol, I had the pleasure to mentor many great interns. I would host one or two interns at a time, who would work for four months during summer break or during the semester while attending college. My former......
11 June, 2021 | Tim Anaya
Today is one of the biggest events of the year at the State Capitol – the Governor’s State of the State Address. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was Governor, it was literally a circus. the entire lawn of the Capitol was literally filled with dozens of s...
25 January, 2018 | Tim Anaya
When I was on vacation recently in Europe, our tour guide would tell us stories every night about her time living as a young bride in Greece with her late husband and young daughter. As we departed, she said she would love to be our......
18 November, 2019 | Tim Anaya
I’ve written extensively about the ongoing troubles at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Last year, the DMV first made headlines with the scandal over long wait times brought about by a lack of any realistic plan to help millions of Californians upda...
02 April, 2019 | Tim Anaya
San Francisco – The Pacific Research Institute (PRI) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) today released the 2008 Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, an annual report highlighting the significant environmental developments and milestone...
09 April, 2008 | Pacific Research Institute
San Francisco – The Pacific Research Institute (PRI) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) today released the 2009 Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, an annual report highlighting the significant environmental developments and milestone...
16 April, 2009 | Steven F. Hayward
With the advent of 2010 California stands only a decade away from 2020 when, according to plan, the state should be producing a full 33 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. That unrealistic goal will be tough to achieve by any standard ...
06 January, 2010 | K. Lloyd Billingsley
San Francisco—Improvements seen across key environmental indicators should be cause for celebration this Earth Day, according to Steven F. Hayward, Ph.D., author of the new book Almanac of Environmental Trends, released by the Pacific Research Instit...
20 April, 2011 | Steven F. Hayward
The reduction in air pollution continues to be the most successful domain of pollution reduction since the first Earth Day in 1970. Since the first edition of this Almanac two years ago, reductions in air pollution have been astonishing. The EPA rece...
16 April, 2013 | Steven Hayward
Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, wins the award for the best staged press conference of 2019. Not since Governor Schwarzenegger brought out the infamous “Count Cartaxula” (played by my good friend Walter von Huene) have we seen anything like a...
14 January, 2019 | Tim Anaya
In late April, Senator Elizabeth Warren beat out other 2020 presidential contenders to the college-aged voter pulpit by introducing a sweeping student loan forgiveness plan. With the previous debate about the nation’s massive $1.57 trillion student l...
21 August, 2019 | Evan Harris
Earlier this year, I wrote about the #Build2020 plan put forward by Assembly Democrats to make it easier to raise taxes at the local level for special taxes and general obligation bonds to pay for things like libraries, hospitals, parks, and other po...
22 August, 2019 | Tim Anaya
Recently, the PRI All Stars (Rowena Itchon, Ben Smithwick, Lance Izumi, Evan Harris and Tim Anaya) got together to hand out their annual 2020 year end awards on PRI’s “Next Round” podcast. Below are their choices for the biggest winners and losers o...
31 December, 2020 | Pacific Research Institute
Former Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy said it best. When speaking about his time in the Legislature, he said, “I’m not a lawmaker. I’m a Republican!” When I worked in the Legislature, I used to always joke that my fellow Republican staff and I had one...
02 April, 2018 | Tim Anaya
I recently read an eye-popping article by business writer Andy Serwer, who reported that nearly one-third of working-age men in America “aren’t doing diddly squat. They don’t have a job, and they aren’t looking for one either.” All total, that’s nea...
27 September, 2021 | Rowena Itchon
California voters rejected Proposition 23 and thereby missed their chance to delay implementation of AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. That measure is certain to worsen a state economy still in recession, with an unemployment ...
17 November, 2010 | K. Lloyd Billingsley
The 50 State Index of Energy Regulation measures the regulatory climate for energy consumption, production, and distribution and which states are more economically efficient. Alabama, Alaska, South Dakota, and Texas tied for the best (#1), while Cali...
07 August, 2014 | Wayne Winegarden
California has some of the lowest fertility rates in the nation, coming in at 1.6 in 2019. The number is expected to decrease even more. One recent study projects that 25% of American millennial women will be childless, a significant uptick from hist...
10 May, 2021 | McKenzie Richards
In addressing the nation’s falling fertility rates, many well-meaning pro-natalists advocate for cash incentives and higher tax credits for families with children. Countries with dismal fertility rates, such as Hungary, have introduced generous progr...
07 June, 2021 | McKenzie Richards
As I posted at the Pacific Research Institute website, the California State Lands Commission (SLC) has rejected a proposal that would have led to the first new oil drilling project off the California coast in 40 years. On January 29, the panel voted ...
07 February, 2009 | Thomas Tanton
Last week the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) published its latest fiscal outlook for California. The headlines were so great that you could almost hear the champagne corks popping in Sacramento. Not only has the state budget in California run sur...
26 November, 2019 | Wayne Winegarden
The health care debate continues to heat up this week. A big vote in Congress on the Graham-Cassidy health care reform legislation is expected before Saturday, September 30. This is the deadline to pass repeal and replace legislation with just 50 vot...
26 September, 2017 | Sally C. Pipes
The nation’s Western states are facing severe, and worsening, water shortages. There are both consumption and supply problems, and neither will be easy to fix. However, we have a remedy for the latter. More water is used in America per capita than al...
07 January, 2020 | Pacific Research Institute
Despite intense, sometimes contentious negotiations — most recently at a meeting of world leaders in Denmark — the likelihood of a binding deal on global carbon emissions appears remote. Virtually all nations agree about the potential severity of cli...
13 March, 2010 | Robert P. Murphy
Necessity is the mother of invention – perhaps that’s why JP Morgan Chase recently bought OpenInvest, a San Francisco-based start-up that provides financial advisors the technology to customize a portfolio of ESG stocks. Rather than put their client...
06 July, 2021 | Rowena Itchon
Supply Side Economics works. This isn’t a political statement, nor should it be a particularly controversial one either, unless you believe I am referring to the mythical “trickle down” straw man conjured up by some in the political establishment. By...
01 February, 2018 | Damon Dunn
Gov. Jerry Brown told us in his recent State of the State address that, of course, nearly all is well in California on his watch. The real state of this state is not so sweet, though. Beneath the sheen applied by the governor, there is......
02 February, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
It’s not surprising that many people are skeptical about “scientific” findings. A new study from Japan seems to show that neonicotinoid insecticides (“neonics”), used around the world to protect crops from insect infestations, are so destructive that...
11 December, 2019 | Henry Miller, M.S., M.D.
PRI is fortunate to be home to several former speechwriters for Presidents and Governors, including me. Anyone who has been a speechwriter watches a big public speech like this week’s State of the Union address or Gov. Newsom’s upcoming State of the ...
06 February, 2020 | Tim Anaya
An end-of-the-year tradition among reporters, commentators, and more recently laptop pundits is the compilation of legislation that becomes law with the turn of the calendar. California being California, there is never a shortage of new rules to live...
05 January, 2022 | Kerry Jackson
In 1967 Arthur Koestler wrote The Ghost in the Machine, which was essentially a critique of the hypothesis that the human mind could be viewed as a machine, a sort of chemical computer. He went on to consider that if were a computer, then what......
02 January, 2020 | Bartlett Cleland
Today is Labor Day, which is traditionally the last day of summer and a time for one last barbecue or trip to the beach with family and friends. Labor Day used to be remembered for another annual tradition – the Jerry Lewis Telethon. For all......
03 September, 2018 | Tim Anaya
While most Californians sleep at night, there must be a group somewhere that stays up thinking of something else to ban. How else to explain the unrelenting march of prohibitions, from single-use plastic bags – directly approved by voters – to plasti...
09 May, 2022 | Kerry Jackson
San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s proposal to boost home building won’t alone relieve the city’ housing shortage. But as starts go, it’s not a bad one. Breed is rolling out a bill that would kill permits and inspection fees, eliminating “thousands o...
12 February, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Some readers recoiled at my depiction last year of Gov. Bill Ritter’s Climate Action Plan as a “faith-based document” that barely hints at the “grueling acrobatics” needed to reach its goals of a 20 percent reduction in ...
02 May, 2008 | Vincent Carroll
Northern California is a hotbed of modern, global technological innovation, particularly internet innovation. Yet, increasingly Washington, D.C. dictates the direction and velocity of innovation, often abetted by the very companies that gained from t...
24 October, 2017 | Bartlett Cleland
In his inaugural address, new President Barack Obama said he intended to “restore science to its rightful place” in government. Several days later, Obama again claimed a change in approach, saying, “Rigid ideology has overruled sound science. Special...
17 February, 2009 | Amy Kaleita
With the disastrous education landscape of 2020 now in the rear-view mirror, the New Year offers the opportunity to consider new ways of delivering effective learning to America’s children. Portal Schools is one such promising model. Confronted with...
13 January, 2021 | Lance Izumi
Everyone who drives in California suspects that fuel prices here are painfully high. And their suspicions are well-founded. Only Hawaii has more expensive gasoline. Or did. Thanks to the 12-cents-a-gallon tax hike on gasoline that went into effect on...
09 November, 2017 | Kerry Jackson
On the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision on Janus, the State Controller’s Office announced that beginning in July, it would stop deducting “fair share fees” from the paychecks of state workers who are not full union members. The fair share fee, ...
16 July, 2018 | Rowena Itchon
Fiscal matters related to COVID-19 has dominated the budget discussions at the State Capitol this spring and summer. In recent weeks, there have been increasingly difficult political discussions over the Newsom administration’s COVID-19 budget spend...
01 September, 2020 | Tim Anaya
Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom delivered his annual State of the State address at the State Capitol. And in an unusual twist, he devoted the entire address to one topic – homelessness. Typically, the State of the State outlines a governor’s policy wi...
25 February, 2020 | Tim Anaya
Last week, after newly-elected members of the Legislature raised their hands to take their oaths of office, many also took the opportunity to introduce their first bills of the legislative session. In a sea of costly new programs, prohibitions on peo...
12 December, 2018 | Tim Anaya
When Andy Puzder was 10, he went with his father, a Ford salesman, to deliver a new car to a wealthy customer. “Mr. Humphrey” lived in opulence on the east side of Cleveland. Puzder marveled at the treasure before him, the enormous house, the grand.....
18 July, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
Last month, Bloomberg published a now-infamous op-ed titled, “Inflation Stings Most if You Earn Less Than $300K. Here’s How to Deal”. Professor Teresa Ghilarducci suggests that to curb inflation, we should eat lentils instead of red meat and let our...
26 April, 2022 | McKenzie Richards
National media attention recently returned to UC Berkeley over the planned “Free Speech Week.” Following dueling press releases over whether the event would occur and who would speak, the event largely fizzled out. Ben Shaprio did speak on campus a ...
09 October, 2017 | Tim Anaya
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt will make official on Tuesday what we knew all along – the Administration is officially withdrawing the controversial Clean Power Plan rule on power plant emissions. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has railed...
10 October, 2017 | Wayne Winegarden
Recently, I attended the graduation ceremony for the Discovery ChalleNGe Academy, which targets high school dropouts and produces quality-educated young people with strong values, life skills, and self-discipline. With so many children falling throu...
30 June, 2020 | Lance Izumi
“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases,” said Ronald Reagan, “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” Uber and Lyft are on the move. And guess what?......
05 March, 2019 | Rowena Itchon
It is with much sadness that I learned of the recent passing of one of my favorite and most respected economists, Professor Walter Williams. Walter was a prolific writer, author, educator, and defender of freedom. He died on December 3rd at 84, hav...
08 December, 2020 | Sally C. Pipes
Recently, I spoke at a local military appreciation ceremony. My fellow speakers included leaders from each branch of the armed services, and we all touched on the ability of the military to transform people. In my speech I used the example of my wi...
11 November, 2021 | Lance Izumi
When I was a junior speechwriter working in Governor Schwarzenegger’s administration, one of the great pleasures I had was working with and getting to know David Crane. David was the Governor’s advisor on economic issues and his office was right nex...
03 November, 2017 | Tim Anaya
It seems clear that the first major penalty man will have to pay for his rapid consumption of the earth’s nonrenewable resources will be that of having to live in a world where his thoughts and actions are ever more strongly limited, where social org...
14 September, 2009 | Robert P. Murphy
California’s chronic water problems were once again national news when Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation establishing a code of water-use restrictions that would be more fitting for an undeveloped nation. As usual, policymakers chose the austerity ...
16 July, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
Ronald Reagan once described the government’s view of the economy like this: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” From his last point, even the Gipper couldn’t imagine that government would tax...
17 November, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
Grade 13. That’s what Californians will be funding if Governor Brown signs Assembly Bill 19, which provides a year of free tuition to anyone enrolling in a California community college, regardless of the student’s income. The bill isn’t intended to h...
21 September, 2017 | Rowena Itchon
California is in the midst of economic turmoil. Headlines shout daily about the plummeting dollar and home values, disappearing jobs, soaring fuel and food costs, and a growing massive state budget deficit. Apparently oblivious to the strain on Calif...
06 July, 2008 | Thomas Tanton
During the recent election, the spin on Proposition 23 became drearily familiar. Voters who favored it were backing “greedy oil companies,” as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put it, out to protect their own financial interests. Those who oppo...
21 November, 2010 | Julie Kaszton
Editor’s Note: On Monday, Dr. Wayne Winegarden, PRI senior fellow in Business and Economics, was invited to testify before the California advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on the civil rights implications of California&...
09 March, 2022 | Wayne Winegarden
When states claim to be first at something, it’s usually cause for pride. But in California, it’s often a signal to head for the hills – or rather, to other states. In another first in the nation, the California Legislature passed a bill last week.....
16 September, 2021 | Rowena Itchon
A recent Fox & Hounds Daily opinion piece by David Crane, economic advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger attempted to dismiss the contribution of AB 32 to the state’s high unemployment rate. AB 32 is California’s “Global Warming Solutions Act,” a b...
17 December, 2009 | Thomas Tanton
John Stossel, ABC News’ co-anchor of “20/20” and a New York Times best-selling author, likes to take a skeptical look at a wide array of issues, but hold the phone on his new healthcare special — it was pulled to make room for yet more......
01 July, 2009 | Dave Eberhart
On November 2, Californians will have an unprecedented opportunity to vote on a ballot measure that will protect jobs and their quality of life. Proposition 23 would suspend implementation of AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, until the...
26 October, 2010 | Pacific Research Institute
Recently, San Diego moved to eliminate minimum parking regulations for businesses near transit and in neighborhood commercial areas. As reported in the San Diego Union-Tribune, the measure—which ended the practice of local regulators telling certain ...
02 December, 2021 | M. Nolan Gray
The California Assembly voted last week to place on the November ballot an initiative to repeal Prop. 209, the 1996 constitutional amendment ending preferential treatment based on race and sex in public education, employment, and government contracti...
16 June, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
There have decades of bipartisan rhetoric about the virtues of home ownership, with politicians competing with one another to see who can propose the worst ideas for responsible homeownership. Some policies, like preferential tax treatment and credit...
23 May, 2019 | Damon Dunn
Today, thousands are gathering in San Francisco for a so-called “Global Climate Action Summit.” Co-hosted by Gov. Jerry Brown, several UN organizations and other leaders, it is billed as a “launchpad for deeper worldwide commitments and accelerated ...
11 September, 2018 | Tim Anaya
Thousands of Afghans who escaped as the Taliban was overtaking their country are being relocated in the U.S. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, “proud,” he said, “of the fact that, over the last decade, the state has taken in more refugees than any ot...
24 September, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
Last week, the Supreme Court issued a major decision in a case about online retailers collecting sales taxes, South Dakota v. Wayfair. As PRI’s Bartlett Cleland recently wrote in Fox and Hounds, “the case is centered around the notion that an entity ...
25 June, 2018 | Tim Anaya
SAN FRANCISCO — Is your food making the planet sick? Are your pork chops, your corn chips, your steaks, your breakfast cereal polluting the air, water and land that everyone on Earth depends on to sustain life? The answer, says a Pacific Research Ins...
06 December, 2010 | Pacific Research Institute
Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a debate of the Democrat and Republican candidates for California Attorney General, which was sponsored by the Sacramento Press Club. The Republican and Democratic candidates could not present a starker cont...
26 March, 2018 | Tim Anaya
Recently, thousands of farm workers and their supporters hit the road in California’s Central Valley to raise awareness of water shortages in the region that are threatening the livelihoods and communities that rely heavily on irrigated crops. The fa...
21 April, 2009 | Amy Kaleita
This is not the time to implement policies that will further cripple California’s economy and put a disproportionate financial burden on the state’s poor and elderly, but that is exactly what the California Air Resources Board is planning...
07 December, 2008 | Thomas Tanton
The California Air Resources Board has proposed a new mandate to require car companies to install metallic reflective windows, which CARB Chairwoman Mary Nichols describes as “a common-sense and cost-effective measure that will help cool the ca...
10 November, 2009 | Pacific Research Institute
Go Downtown Things will be great when you’re — Downtown No finer place for sure — Downtown Everything’s waiting for you – Petula Clark, 1964 Perhaps I date myself, but I can still remember this 1960s song that captured the al...
14 January, 2022 | Rowena Itchon
I recently read about a case in Berkeley where a hot dog vendor just trying to earn a few dollars was manhandled by city government. Rigoberto “Beto” Matias was selling bacon-wrapped hotdogs outside a Cal football game. A police officer approached Be...
23 October, 2017 | Tim Anaya
Political partisanship can be found in every part of society. What you say, or even what you do not say, is ripe for political criticism these days. It is no surprise then that social media, where a majority of the world devotes multiple hours each.....
07 July, 2020 | Evan Harris
There has been much speculation on Right by the Bay and elsewhere about how Gov. Gavin Newsom will address surging state tax revenue to meet the requirements of the so-called Gann Limit. Newsom promised in his 3-hour marathon Jan. 10 budget press con...
20 January, 2022 | Tim Anaya
In his “Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity” series, PRI’s Dr. Wayne Winegarden has argued that one of the most important ways that elected officials can help to lift people up the economy ladder is by embracing policies that encourage entrepreneur...
01 April, 2020 | Tim Anaya
Californians harboring dystopian fears would have us believe that the state is sowing the seeds of its own destruction by leading in the development of artificial intelligence. Consider state legislation introduced this year that would fine companies...
23 August, 2017 | Bartlett Cleland
Right by the Bay is celebrating (or lamenting) April Fool’s Day by creating the following quiz on weird and goofy laws beginning in 2019 in California. If you get a perfect score, you get a one-way ticket to Texas (April Fool’s!). True or False: Sur...
01 April, 2019 | Rowena Itchon
Humorist Will Rogers regularly uttered world-class comments, but few of his eminently quotable remarks can compete with his observation that a deadlocked Congress which can’t act “is the greatest blessing that could befall this country.” It’s temptin...
06 August, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
Could it be that in their hot green haste to eliminate fossil fuels from California that lawmakers have not given much thought, if any, to an unintended consequence of their actions that will have harmful environmental effects? Sure seems like it. Un...
03 February, 2022 | Kerry Jackson
With the mid-term elections now less than 100 days away, the siren-call for single-payer or “Medicare for All” continues. Fifty-one percent of those polled earlier this year by Kaiser support single payer, the highest number ever recorded. But as ...
15 August, 2018 | Sally C. Pipes
While it took a couple months for clarity to replace idle speculation, the Biden administration’s tech and innovation public policy agenda is increasingly clear. The forecast? Government with little chance of free markets. At his recent address to Co...
21 May, 2021 | Bartlett Cleland
San Francisco Examiner, June 9, 2009 We hear it every day. News headlines read: “Global Warming Biggest Threat of 21st Century, Experts say.” (businessweek.com. May 13th, 2009. Gardner, Amanda). News anchors provide us with a choice, either we believ...
09 June, 2009 | Blake Yount
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has officially filed suit against Uber and Lyft for violating Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5). The action is a clear signal that the state’s policy leaders are determined to maximize the economic damage from this ill...
06 May, 2020 | Wayne Winegarden
It’s one thing to be considered a Judicial Hellhole. It’s another thing altogether to hold that distinction year after year . . . after year. But, just as it is with so many state rankings, California isn’t a newcomer at the wrong end of a......
18 December, 2017 | Kerry Jackson
Forgive us if we sound like a broken record, but the exodus of California businesses out of the state to more affordable and competitive economic climates grew worse last week. The Los Angeles Times reports that the latest corporate headquarters to a...
24 August, 2021 | Tim Anaya
“Won’t you get hip to this timely tip: When you make that California trip, get your kicks on Route 66.” – Bobby Troup, “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” Coinciding with inflation rising faster than it has in 13 years, the cost of driving in......
22 June, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
The clock is ticking for trucking companies in the U.S. to comply with a federal mandate requiring drivers to stop logging their hours on the road with paper logs and switch to electronic logging devices (ELD) – and not everyone is happy about the ch...
07 November, 2017 | Ben Smithwick
Last week, the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that private sector unions can’t force workers to pay for union lobbying activities. Jeanette Geary, a Rhode Island nurse who is not a union member, waged a decade-long battle against the Unite...
24 September, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
The government is not doing a very effective job of playing car salesman. Despite providing federal manufacturing grants and loans worth $40.7 billion and other $2 billion in federal tax credits to subsidize electric car purchases, electric cars, or ...
22 February, 2018 | Tim Anaya
The United States government recently announced plans to look into allegations of anti-competitive behavior among agribusiness companies, particularly Monsanto, the ag biotechnology giant. As this action unfolds, policy makers should keep some realit...
17 December, 2009 | Amy Kaleita
Fuel prices in California are soaring like it’s 1979. A gallon of regular gasoline was averaging $3.82 across the state on Oct. 18, nearly a full dollar higher than the national average, according to AAA. Only in Hawaii are prices higher. With the su...
22 October, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
It was 38 years ago this weekend when during Super Bowl XVIII, Apple debuted one of the most powerful and provocative ads of all time. “1984” opens with an army of clone-like humans marching into a theater to watch on a giant screen a menacing......
21 January, 2021 | Rowena Itchon
The old adage is April showers bring May flowers. Well, after a very wet winter, it looks like spring has finally sprung in California. As soon as the seasons change, Golden State drivers are typically hit with another unwelcome phenomenon brought ...
16 April, 2019 | Tim Anaya
The prospects sound good but the conference got only half the story. Estimates of just how many jobs our push to go green may generate vary widely, but not all economists believe that there really will be any kind of green-job boom. More important is...
08 December, 2008 | Thomas Tanton
After being soundly defeated in the Senate 0-57 (43 Democrats voted “present”), the Green New Deal continues to languish in the House. Roll Call reported the following excuse from Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I can’t say we’re going to take that and pass ...
19 June, 2019 | Rowena Itchon
Back in 2014, when I was in my past life working for elected officials, I found myself engaged in one of the more annoying parts of the job – “volunteering” on political campaigns. One day, my volunteer efforts took me to a neighborhood in San......
28 September, 2021 | Tim Anaya
According to one San Francisco supervisor, there are tens of thousands of vacant housing units in the city. “How do we activate them?” he asks. It’s a good question, with an answer that’s likely to unsettle the dwindling number in California who stil...
01 April, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
The scandal in Loudon County, Virginia, where the school superintendent and school board covered up the rape of a student, has made national headlines. National data indicates that such cover-ups may be occurring more frequently than the public reali...
10 November, 2021 | Lance Izumi
PRI’s coverage of California’s poverty problem through various op-eds and a policy brief have drawn considerable attention. Most of it has been positive, but one California writer for the hard-left Mother Jones claimed that despite the point we made,...
29 January, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
A dashcam video of downtown Los Angeles on Christmas Day 2017 revealed the devastating reality of the city’s homelessness problem. The video, shot in the city’s Skid Row district, shows dozens of tents, makeshift shelters, and people walking aimlessl...
30 January, 2018 | Ben Smithwick
Energy poverty is on the rise across Arizona today. If you spend more than 10 percent of your income on electricity, natural gas, and other household energy costs, then you are afflicted by energy poverty. It is a tragedy that forces some families to...
18 November, 2016 | Wayne Winegarden
Despite technological advancements to the movement of goods, trucks will still transport and deliver and incredible amount of goods in 2020. But automation and self-driving research are not the biggest threat to truckers anymore. California’s contest...
07 January, 2020 | Evan Harris
At what point did the lawmakers who voted for, and the governor who signed, California Assembly Bill 5 realize it’s lousy policy? It should have been the moment the idea was first conceived. But that didn’t happen, the legislation became law, and now...
11 February, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
The great investor Warren Buffett once said, “Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.” UC President Janet Napolitan...
04 June, 2018 | Rowena Itchon
Only in California will you witness Assembly progressives hijacking a bill that suspends a tax to gut-and-amend it with language that enacts a new tax. Assemblymember Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) introduced Assembly Bill 1638 at the beginning of this year...
05 April, 2022 | Emily Humpal
In my last blog post, I previewed the Assembly’s unusual “Committee of the Whole” hearing on the state budget, comparing it to Seinfeld’s Festivus “Airing of Grievances.” Little did I know how clairvoyant I really was. Last Tuesday’s five hour sessio...
01 June, 2020 | Tim Anaya
When the California Air Resources Board opens its new headquarters in two years in Riverside, it will be basking in the radiance of the “world’s largest permanent collection of artworks addressing air quality and the effects of climate change.” The c...
20 November, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Way back in August, in what seems like an entirely different historical era, when California was open relative to the restrictions we’re under today, 44% of small business owners said they were at risk of permanent closure in the next six months, unl...
06 January, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
Earth Day is fast approaching, yet despite the awareness this day brings, most people are powering their computers with electricity from coal-burning power plants, delivered by “dumb” networks. Change is long overdue, and it’s not a...
17 April, 2009 | Sonia Arrison
During my recent vacation in Australia and New Zealand, my friends and I spent an enjoyable day in Melbourne while on a Tasmanian cruise. Whenever I visit a big city for the first time on a trip, I always book a survey tour to take......
14 November, 2017 | Tim Anaya
Parents across the United States are becoming increasingly frantic as the baby formula shortage worsens. To the chagrin of parents looking for answers, the shortage has devolved into a circuitous blame game. Last week, outgoing White House Press Secr...
16 May, 2022 | McKenzie Richards
No drum roll needed. The answer to the question “which state is the worst for drivers?” is obvious. It’s California. An analysis of “diverse datasets covering cost, safety, driving quality and weather” by Bankrate yielded the most unsurprising result...
09 December, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
When I was in the investment industry in the 1990s, my friend Jeannette and I observed that after meetings and conferences, the top executives – mostly men but a few women — often played a round of golf. We knew a lot of bonding took......
03 October, 2018 | Rowena Itchon
Asia Sentinel (Hong Kong), 19 February 2008 The US decision to divert food crops for motor-fuel is proving a costly mistake – especially for Asia. What has long been predicted – that the US decision to push the use of corn to make biofuel would......
19 February, 2008 | Pacific Research Institute
Reeling from multiple massive state wildfires that its actions likely triggered, Pacific Gas & Electric, or PG&E, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this time last year. The investor-owned utility faces a June 30, 2020 deadline to come up with a...
12 February, 2020 | Evan Harris
Californians who have been seen power supplies become more unreliable in recent years have increasingly turned to gas-powered electric generators to keep the lights on during “public safety power shutoffs.” According to the industry trade group, ther...
15 September, 2021 | Tim Anaya
The newspaper comic strip They’ll Do It Every Time that was published for nearly 80 years through 2008 “illustrated minor absurdities, frustrations, hypocrisies, ironies and misfortunes of everyday life,” says Wikipedia, typically showing “deceptive,...
14 November, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Having successfully outlawed plastic bags and straws, the next target of California lawmakers, who seem intent on criminalizing as many consumer conveniences as possible, just might be those foam containers used to hold take-out food. Polystyrene, of...
24 October, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
Former Connecticut State Treasurer and founder and president of the Institute for Pension Fund Integrity Christopher Bancroft Burnham recently cited Dr. Wayne Winegarden’s study showing how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds unde...
28 May, 2020 | Pacific Research Institute
In this November election, it’s unfortunate that there’s only one seat up on the BART board (for non-Bay Area readers, BART is the region’s electric train line), because if I had one command as Queen for a day – a question Tim Anaya likes to......
16 October, 2018 | Rowena Itchon
In 2006, at the end of his movie An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore offered a number of things that the average person could do to decrease their impact on global climate change. They could ride a bike or take mass transit, the former vice-president advi...
15 July, 2008 | Amy Kaleita
What do a man in a bear suit, a recall, and California Governor Gavin Newsom have in common? They are all part of a stranger than fiction story about the latest bill to fall victim to the Governor’s veto pen. This week, Governor Newsom vetoed......
11 October, 2021 | Evan Harris
Last week, the U.S. Labor Department reported that the consumer price index (CPI), a broad measure of the prices for everyday items like groceries, rents, and gas rose 8.3 percent in April from a year ago, just below March’s surge of 8.5 percent. Cou...
24 May, 2022 | Rowena Itchon
Been There, Done That on “Making it Rain” in High Tax, Big Spending States Democrats in Congress representing high tax, big spending states like California are pushing for restoration of the State and Local Tax (SALT) Deduction in the bud...
04 November, 2021 | Pacific Research Institute
Been There, Done That on Attacking Charter Schools Inspired by a recent California law, the Biden Administration has proposed federal regulations that would require new charter schools to “demonstrate community need” before being approved, and also r...
09 May, 2022 | Pacific Research Institute
Been There, Done That on Broken Promises on Wildfire Prevention While touring wildfire damage in Northern California, President Biden touted billions in proposed federal dollars for wildfire resilience and forest management. But California dollars t...
21 September, 2021 | Pacific Research Institute
President Biden has proposed $174 billion in federal electric car subsidies, which research shows have been little more than giveaways to wealthy car buyers. California Has “Been There, Done That” California is one of the nation’s leaders in o...
08 July, 2021 | Pacific Research Institute
Inspired by California’s high-speed rail debacle, the Biden Administration and liberals in Congress have proposed spending tens of billions of dollars to build new high-speed rail networks nationwide. California Has “Been There, Done That” California...
18 June, 2021 | Pacific Research Institute
The Biden Administration wants to impose a national version of California’s unrealistic and unaffordable renewable energy mandates. California Has “Been There, Done That” California has established the nation’s most aggressive renewable portfolio goa...
03 June, 2021 | Pacific Research Institute
Living in San Francisco is a dollar-burning experience. It’s the most expensive housing market in the country, and the cost of living is higher only in Manhattan. But what about building a business in the city that fancies itself as The City? Don’t e...
18 May, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
Before any policy is changed, the potential economic consequences that they can cause should be considered. The Community Reinvestment Act and other affordable housing regulations, for instance, were supposed to increase loan availability to under-se...
20 June, 2013 | Wayne Winegarden
There is little doubt that the U.S. needs comprehensive tax reform. The corporate income tax system is globally uncompetitive; the personal income tax system is so complicated that even the IRS can’t answer taxpayers’ questions. The right reform impl...
24 August, 2017 | Wayne Winegarden
Back in 2017, concerned over the sclerotic growth of the U.S. economy, PRI published a series of studies titled Beyond the New Normal by economist and PRI senior fellow Wayne Winegarden. Up until that point, annual real GDP growth averaged just 1.9 p...
13 February, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
Very late to the party, last month I made my first financial transaction using Venmo. It’s hard to write to the next line and not come off like President Bush 41 being wowed by seeing scanners at a grocery store, but I was amazed at......
04 October, 2021 | Tim Anaya
This week, President Joe Biden announced that California ports will operate non-stop to relieve the container ship bottleneck. Major companies like FedEx, UPS, Walmart, and The Home Depot, among others, also announced they will expand their hours unl...
15 October, 2021 | Evan Harris
A couple of weeks ago, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the White House was working with Facebook and other social media companies to target accounts spreading misinformation. Reaction to her comments and answers from reporters varied,...
26 July, 2021 | Evan Harris
The latest scheme to fund Pres. Biden’s multi-trillion social spending plan is to impose a 15 percent corporate minimum tax. Taxpayers might be wondering why it matters, since former Pres. Trump already lowered the corporate tax rate to 21 percent f...
02 November, 2021 | Rowena Itchon
President Biden’s American Families Plan promises expansive benefits to families such as free universal preschool, two years of free community college, child tax credits, and a paid family leave program amongst many other attractive (but expensive) i...
25 August, 2021 | McKenzie Richards
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden last week unveiled his version of the Green New Deal. The plan, which can be summed up as AOC meets CA, shows just how far Biden is willing to lunge toward the left coast’s environmental agenda. AOC’s Green N...
23 July, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
The New York Times has a summary of the Biden Tax Plan claiming to explain “some of the main provisions included in the plan and how they’re intended to work.” While the Times may have accurately explained how the Administration “intends” for the tax...
06 May, 2021 | Wayne Winegarden
President-elect Joe Biden has nominated Michael Regan to lead the EPA. Regan worked at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for years, and has been North Carolina’s environmental chief since 2018. As North Carolina’s top environmentalist, Regan ...
22 December, 2020 | Wayne Winegarden
In a recent survey, Americans ranked inflation as the most urgent issue facing the country. So, our ears perked up when Pres. Biden began laying out his plan to bring down inflation in his State of the Union address. After listening to his speech, ...
11 March, 2022 | Rowena Itchon
In his bid for the White House, Pres. Biden promised to appoint the first Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court. As a senator, however, he did everything possible to prevent it from happening. In 2003, then-Senator Biden used the filibuster (what pro...
02 February, 2022 | Rowena Itchon
Right by the Bay has been following Sacramento’s tax raising schemes here, here, and here. But the state’s tax marauding politicians aren’t the only ones we should be worried about. Presidential candidate Joe Biden also wants Washington’s share of ...
02 September, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
Several possibilities have been offered for how the Biden administration will shift U.S. trade policy including scrapping the Trump trade negotiations with China through executive order and working with Asian allies to pressure China. Much of the Tru...
14 December, 2020 | Evan Harris
As of this writing, we don’t know who has won the 2020 presidential election. Whoever wins, America’s next chief executive has many important policy decisions to make in the coming weeks. Here’s a preview of some of the big issues that the presiden...
04 November, 2020 | Tim Anaya
In October, San Francisco’s newest garbage management law goes into effect, potentially fining residents up to $100 per violation – businesses up to $500 – for failing to separate compostable garbage from their trash. Fines can also be incurred if ga...
17 September, 2009 | Amy Kaleita
The California Energy Commission recently considered a proposal to take control of home thermostats, a move that drew national attention and public protests. The CEC has now backed off,-but the story remains instructive for California consumers and p...
01 February, 2008 | Thomas Tanton
Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) can be considered the flagship environmental policy for state government in the US. The RPS programs have been adopted by 29 states and apply to half of the national electricity market. The staple of any RPS progra...
08 August, 2019 | Evan Harris
Pick nearly any state in the union and likely it has a large swath of rural area and population. Even California, which is rarely thought of as a “rural state,” is still physically more than half rural, with about four million residents living in tho...
13 October, 2020 | Bartlett Cleland
One of the most contentious battles of this year’s legislative session was AB 5, with labor and gig economy companies duking out over the definition of who is an employee and who is an independent contractor. In this battle over the “new economy” and...
26 September, 2019 | Tim Anaya
In the early days of the pandemic lockdowns, San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a temporary moratorium on evictions of small and mid-size businesses “due to a loss of income related to lost revenue or other economic impacts caused by the COVID...
17 June, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
A Sign the ESG Movement Is Too Big to Ignore: There’s Backlash In the waning days of the Trump administration, several agencies are pushing back on the notion that corporations should prioritize anything other than profits. By Peter Coy, December 22...
22 December, 2020 | Pacific Research Institute
About the same time two of California’s largest cities were named among the seven worst-run municipalities in the country, we learn that the state’s — and the country’s — largest county had the worst population outflow in the U.S. in 2018. The livin’...
15 July, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
It’s been 45 years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke – the case that opened the door to “diversity” admissions at America’s colleges and universities. What’s happened since this landmark ...
10 June, 2021 | Rowena Itchon
Watch our new animated video to learn how breaking down barriers in state insurance adjuster licensing could speed up response times for disaster claims and everyday claims, lower costs, and provide job opportunities. It’s based off of Wayne Wi...
12 February, 2018 | Pacific Research Institute
Shortly after the New Year’s holiday, Gov. Gavin Newsom will kick off “state budget season” when he releases his 2022-23 state budget proposal on January 10. In a sign that perhaps lawmakers won’t be ceding as much of the spotlight to Newsom in 2022 ...
14 December, 2021 | Tim Anaya
On July 29, California’s Attorney General Jerry Brown said he will sue to block a proposed water-bottling operation in Northern California, unless its effects on global warming are evaluated. Nestlé Waters North America wants to pump 200 million gall...
14 August, 2008 | Thomas Tanton
We are often critical of the way Gov. Jerry Brown governs and the ideas that he proposes. He too often leans on the progressive playbook. But we’ve not been afraid to say that he’s right when he’s right, and today he’s right. The governor is......
01 December, 2017 | Kerry Jackson
Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2018-19 budget proposal is projecting a $6.1 billion surplus by July 1, 2019, further evidence that the taxpayers of California have been overcharged. But there will be no rebates. Brown said at his press conference Wednesday that,...
11 January, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
At long last, Gov. Newsom and Democratic leaders have reached a budget agreement. Now lawmakers will race to pass the final legislation as the clock ticks down toward the June 30th deadline for the Gov. to sign a balanced budget. For many days, News...
23 June, 2020 | Tim Anaya
On Monday, Gov. Newsom announced via press release that he had signed the 2020-21 state budget. Naturally, much of the budget press coverage typically focuses on the debate between the Governor and the Legislature and the total state spending picture...
02 July, 2020 | Tim Anaya
Last week, the center of the budget universe moved upstairs at the State Capitol as budget subcommittees in the Senate and Assembly held hearings to explore all aspects of Gov. Newsom’s plan to close the budget deficit he pegs at $54 billion. A few i...
26 May, 2020 | Tim Anaya
Home ownership provides basic financial literacy, drives wealth creation, and increases free cash flow for individuals and families. However, it can be difficult to differentiate between having surplus cash and wealth. Having surplus cash is havin...
11 July, 2019 | Damon Dunn
One such environmental policy under question is the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32) which was signed into law in 2006. The law attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through a cap and trade program. The Global Warming Solutions Act is the la...
23 April, 2009 | Thomas Tanton
On the second business day after the state’s higher minimum wage took effect, employers in Los Angeles County had another weight dropped on them. The County Board of Supervisors approved a $5 an hour increase in “front-line” workers’ wages. It applie...
20 January, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
Last month we covered the story of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors deciding it was within the scope of their duties to reward pandemic “front-line” workers with other people’s money. As we noted then, Long Beach was considering a similar ...
08 February, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
Two new regulations suggest that California leads the nation in mandates that inconvenience its residents while gaining little for the environment. First, consider the California Energy Commission’s unanimous vote Wednesday to effectively ban m...
18 November, 2009 | Robert P. Murphy
One of my all-time favorite shows is “The McLaughlin Group.” I used to love watching Dr. McLaughlin spar over the years with the likes of Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, Clarence Page, Freddy “the Beadle” Barnes, Mor-ton Kondracke, the late great Jack G...
22 December, 2017 | Tim Anaya
Despite taking in record state tax revenue over the past year, California lawmakers proposed more than $236.4 billion in new taxes and fees in 2021, finds the annual “Tax and Fee Report” just released by the California Tax Foundation. Over the past t...
06 December, 2021 | Tim Anaya
What’s in President Trump’s tax returns? It’s a mystery that has stumped cable television pundits since he refused to release them during the 2016 campaign. At times, the furor has been so high that I’m surprised that Matlock or Jessica Fletcher we...
17 July, 2019 | Tim Anaya
I have spent my entire 35 year professional life developing and implementing energy policies vital to our state. So it pains me to now see California taking an unfortunate misstep: embracing participation in the Western Climate Initiative. WCI, devel...
05 March, 2009 | Thomas Tanton
An innovative project to squeeze water from the desert to help quench perpetually thirsty Southern California showed some promise – until the Biden administration decided to halt the plans. The courts might rule against the White House, but for now i...
22 December, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
Most of the California business community is at the mercy of California’s progressive state legislature. It is easy to forget, especially with Silicon Valley pumping out inflated IPOs, that small businesses are the backbone of the economy. The U.S. S...
23 September, 2020 | Evan Harris
Earlier this year, Governor Gavin Newsom proposed a so-called “data dividend” because, he says, “California’s consumers should also be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data…” The Governor provided almost no details then, and few...
14 May, 2019 | Bartlett Cleland
Even though the state has slipped in the rankings over the past several years, California is still an innovation hub with an economy that is firmly grounded in innovative industries from videogames to internet, and technology hardware to movies. Ther...
13 August, 2019 | Bartlett Cleland
A Washington newspaper has reported that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the socialist from Vermont, has received 300 endorsements from California. That goes a long to explaining why things keep going wrong in the state. “The campaign released endorsements...
09 January, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
Nearly three dozen bills intended to revise or repeal Assembly Bill 5, which restricts workers’ freedom and could potentially kill the burgeoning gig economy, have been introduced in Sacramento. Here is some of the latest, and most important, news ab...
12 March, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
The California State Assembly is refusing to provide the names of assemblymen who voted to ban oil recovery off the coast of Santa Barbara. Twenty-eight members supported the ban, but their votes cannot be found in the official state database. Assemb...
01 November, 2009 | Pacific Research Institute
The California Air Resources Board has set a powerful regulatory force in motion by approving an outline for meeting the carbon dioxide reductions required by a state law aimed at combating global warming. The outline, known as a “scoping plan,” is r...
01 February, 2009 | Thomas Tanton
California once again experienced one of the largest wildfires in state history in 2021, in the shadow of a severe drought that is increasing fire danger. In this panel discussion from PRI’s annual Ideas in Action Conference in Sacramento, policy exp...
28 March, 2022 | Pacific Research Institute
Earlier this month, The New York Times gave space to a climate activist who argued that policymakers must “Free California of Fossil Fuels.” Six days later, the Times’ California Today feature covered the state’s “Move to Mandate 100% Carbon-Free Ele...
27 August, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
There are no fortune tellers at PRI, but it isn’t hard to foresee what is likely to happen in California in 2018. First, it’s a sure bet that the Legislature will pass a boxcar load of unneeded, heavy-handed and odious policies when lawmakers reconve...
28 December, 2017 | Kerry Jackson
In 2021, as in 2020, the Golden State only continued to shrink. According to new data from the Department of Finance, California lost a startling 173,000 residents last year. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, 55,000 of those lost residents were v...
06 January, 2022 | M. Nolan Gray
Last week, an investment management and advisory firm comprised of professors from California State University, Sacramento, released a report attempting to estimate the costs to small businesses – and therefore to California’s economy – of implementi...
21 July, 2009 | Amy Kaleita
California’s 2018 crime data has been released and the news is mostly encouraging, though a bit mixed. The violent crime rate is slightly down (1.5%) after growing for three straight years, and four of the last seven, according to data released this ...
22 July, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
The planned early release of 76,000 inmates from California prisons is a big meal not well digested by prosecutors across the state. “Allowing the early release of the most dangerous criminals, shortening sentences as much as 50%, impacts crime victi...
25 May, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
California officials want to eventually force everyone on the road out of their gasoline- and diesel-powered automobiles and into electric vehicles. But it’s a radical shift that can’t be decreed into existence overnight. So, expect a boost in the go...
17 October, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
The fight between Nestlé and the California State Water Resources Control Board finally bubbled over last month after years of finger-pointing. In an April 23, 2021 letter, the board ordered that Nestlé cease-and-desist “unauthorized diversions and...
13 May, 2021 | Evan Harris
The state of California, which can’t keep the lights on thanks to political interference in energy generation, nor build enough homes because government has poisoned the housing market, is going into the pharmaceutical manufacturing business. But the...
09 September, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
Californians who are struggling to make ends meet during these tough economic times are going to be in for sticker shock come July 1: gas prices will rise yet again. What’s behind the increase, you ask? It’s not due to rising demand as people begin...
29 June, 2020 | Wayne Winegarden
DOWNLOAD THE PDF The recent record-breaking bomb cyclone that replenished depleted reservoirs and swelled shriveling rivers was not enough to break the drought. So parched is the state that Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency, a condi...
16 November, 2021 | Dana Beigel
As California’s unemployment rate hovers above 12 percent, even the state’s Democratic leaders – notorious for regulating, taxing and complaining about California’s business community – are talking about jobs. They are championing t...
22 October, 2011 | Steven Greenhut
If you were able to make it through California Governor Gavin Newsom’s almost three-hour budget briefing, you’ve probably been following the enormous funding proposals included in the $222.2 billion budget estimate. You can save 167 minute of your ti...
21 January, 2020 | Evan Harris
Sacramento Democrats have drawn up a Green New Deal for California, which, the public is being told, is necessary to prevent a global warming crisis. The usual empty talking points that are poor substitutes for climate facts have been strung together...
15 January, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
Californians regard themselves as members of the environmentally aware aristocracy. Polls consistently show that large numbers of Golden Staters agonize over Gaia’s plight. An SFGate headline last year that declared “Californians put high priority on...
23 July, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
As part of its May Revise rollout, the Newsom administration announced $5.1 billion for water infrastructure and drought response. While the announcement invests on funding better data collection, continuing the implementation of Sustainable Groundwa...
26 May, 2021 | Evan Harris
Gov. Gavin Newsom will not after all appoint a homelessness czar, as he had promised he would during the 2018 campaign. Now, if he would just disband the homelessness task force that was formed in the spring. While running for governor last year as t...
16 September, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Advocates have fought to make California a part-time legislature for a while now. Strangely, the coronavirus pandemic has given these advocates what they want in the interest of public health. The California State Legislature has largely been sidelin...
22 July, 2020 | Evan Harris
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece on the National Council on Teacher Quality’s excellent research on California’s failed teacher quality policies, and now the organization has followed up by releasing a new analysis showing that California is AWOL whe...
29 October, 2019 | Lance Izumi
More than a half-century ago, in one of the most famous movie lines of all time, Dustin Hoffman character Benjamin Braddock, fresh out of college, received some unsolicited career advice. “I want to say one word to you. Just one word,” Mr. McGuire to...
06 May, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Tax reform has taken center stage in Washington. Just last week, the House Ways and Means Committee approved the House’s tax reform proposal, while the Senate released its own tax reform proposal. If you picked up a newspaper in California, you would...
16 November, 2017 | Tim Anaya
Water policy is one of those topics that can leave newcomers and casual listeners feeling inundated. The regulations that govern state and federal water policy are laced with a flood of acronyms and terms, with a steady gush of changes to state water...
09 September, 2019 | Evan Harris
There’s a new target in California’s war on plastics: those handy bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and lotion that hotels hand out to guests. Assembly Bill 1162, approved by the Natural Resources Committee and surely to get the same favora...
23 April, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Not often does Sacramento get it right in the eyes of the defenders of liberty. A bill allowing athletes at public and private California colleges to earn money from endorsements, however, is likely to earn their approval. Senate Bill 206, the Fair P...
09 July, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Fentanyl is a growing crisis across California. Local elected officials and police departments are going to war against this epidemic to try and save lives, but is the state assisting in this effort or are permissive policies possibly fostering the u...
04 April, 2022 | Emily Humpal
Gov. Gavin Newsom, running for his political life, is right, not everything is grim in California. At the same time, a lot of damage has been done over the last 25 years. Don’t believe it? Take a look at any list that ranks the states......
18 August, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
Californians have recently endured increasingly aggressive wildfires, rolling power outages, and smoke-filled air for days. Unless the state government changes course, we can add water shortages to this list. According to the U.S. Geological Survey,...
26 January, 2021 | Daniel Kolkey
Another national list, another nearly rock-bottom ranking for California. It’s become too predictable. When WalletHub, a prolific producer of lists, says that California is 48th among the states on “taxpayer return on investment” (forget for the mome...
16 July, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
The California state motto is “Eureka,” Greek for “I have found it.” Says State Symbols USA, “famed Greek mathematician Archimedes is said to have exclaimed ‘Eureka!’ when he finally discovered a method for determining the purity of gold.” The motto ...
21 October, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
California policymakers have indicated that when the state converts to a renewables-only energy framework in 2045, wind and sun will be the only sources permitted. Categorical renewables such as hydroelectric power and nuclear will not be considered....
24 September, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
It would be neither profound nor unique to note that the California dream, immortalized by John and Michelle Phillips’ famed lyrics, ain’t what it used to be. It would be nothing more than a mere statement of a fact which is well-known but neverthele...
30 July, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
Download the PDF A recently released independent report says California isn’t going to meet its 2030 emissions goal. Those who have been paying close attention, and those who have immersed themselves in PRI research, won’t be even mildly surprised by...
13 January, 2022 | Kerry Jackson
In June 2011, a group of Republican lawmakers gathered at a Ford dealership in downtown Sacramento for a celebratory press conference. They were gathered to celebrate what they were calling, “Freedom from Higher Taxes Day,” the day when temporary tax...
01 July, 2019 | Tim Anaya
While visiting yet another charred part of California last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he was “a little bit exhausted that we have to continue to debate this issue. This a climate damn emergency.” It’s a statement he can make confident that few of C...
15 September, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
It’s widely known that the California bullet train will cost far more than promised, carry fewer passengers at higher fares than predicted, and is more than a decade behind schedule. Add to this another significant flaw that has received little atten...
27 April, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
Voters will be asked to decide on many important ballot propositions on November 3 with rent control, the future of independent contractors, and data privacy among the most impactful issues on the ballot. One proposition that voters may overlook is P...
06 October, 2020 | Evan Harris
Viewers of President Biden’s speech to Congress last week may have been struck by size of the trillions in new federal spending the President outlined in his speech. In advance of the President’s speech, Democrats in the California Legislature had a...
03 May, 2021 | Tim Anaya
Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers have made it clear they believe rent control is one of the solutions to California’s housing shortage. According to the Los Angeles Times, an agreement announced late on the Friday evening before the Labor Day weekend ...
10 September, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
December is about half gone, and, as the Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz once sang, “it’s getting cold in California.” In another song from the same 1996 album Duritz also sang that it’s been “a long December and there’s reason to believe may...
19 December, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
California’s Great Blackout of 2019 has begun as the lights keep going out for millions across the state’s northern stretches. What should be the past now seems to be the future. Pacific Gas and Electric began shutting down power early the morning of...
30 October, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Windmills on the water. Get ready for them. They’re on their way, thanks to a recently signed bill. The new law requires the state’s Energy Commission “to evaluate and quantify the maximum feasible capacity of” offshore wind energy in federal waters,...
01 October, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
Environment & Climate News (Heartland Institute), April 1, 2009 The California State Lands Commission has rejected an agreement by industry and environmental groups that would have allowed environmentally friendly oil production off the coast of...
01 April, 2009 | Pacific Research Institute
Even after all the spending cuts and state worker furlough days, the state continues to be short on cash. The Assembly’s vote against the offshore drilling lease is troubling because it seems to lack any acknowledgment of California’s dire position b...
28 July, 2009 | Thomas Tanton
The California state Senate has passed and sent to the Assembly a bill to ban the use of food packaging containing perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Senate Bill 1313 would ban persons and companies from manufacturing...
01 July, 2008 | Thomas Tanton
Last month the D.C. Court of Appeals settled, for now, the question of how much freedom consumers will be guaranteed to make their internet experience the one they want. The Court upheld the current Federal Communication Commission’s Restoring Intern...
21 November, 2019 | Bartlett Cleland
DOWNLOAD THE PDF California is the first state to surpass a million plug-in electric vehicle registrations. It’s a proud moment for those who are determined to eliminate fossil fuel vehicles. But it’s not the grand achievement they think it is. At th...
28 February, 2022 | Kerry Jackson
Since 2011, the California State Legislature has been itching to bring back redevelopment agencies. Governor Jerry Brown’s nixing of the 70-year-old program scored the California state budget several billion dollars during the Great Recession in 2011...
19 September, 2019 | Evan Harris
The results of the 2019 National Assessment for Educational Progress, often called the “Nation’s Report Card,” came out recently and California’s scores once again tanked, with one of the likely causes being the national Common Core standards and ali...
04 November, 2019 | Lance Izumi
EPA stresses national solution to national issue (Chicago, Illinois – January 3, 2008) On Wednesday, January 2, California, along with 15 other states, sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, alleging EPA unlawfully rejected California&#...
03 January, 2008 | Pacific Research Institute
It didn’t take long for a California Supreme Court decision to start claiming victims. Bottle & Barlow, a “get loose stay sharp” joint on trendy R Street in Sacramento, where a gentleman can sip whisky and also be stylishly shorn, has lost its en...
18 September, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
Last week, the California Supreme Court heard the case Cal Fire Local 2881 v. CalPERS which challenged the 2013 law (the California Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act or PEPRA) that eliminated state employees’ ability to add up to five years of emp...
13 December, 2018 | Rowena Itchon
California’s Air Resources Board has approved a landmark rule mandating a statewide cut in greenhouse gas emissions from transportation fuels through 2020. The sweeping regulation targets carbon emissions from the production and burning of gasoline a...
01 July, 2009 | Thomas Tanton
While California’s teacher unions are winning expensive battles on the strike lines and are flexing their political muscle in Sacramento, new research shows that state teacher-quality policies are failing to ensure that every public-school classroom ...
08 October, 2019 | Lance Izumi
Just days after signing legislation committing the state to 100 percent renewable sources for electricity, Gov. Jerry Brown hosted a grandiose climate summit in San Francisco. Noticeably absent from the conference was even the smallest dose of health...
25 September, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
What does it say when members of Congress from elsewhere are more serious about saving the state from future wildfire disasters than many of California’s own politically connected activists? More than 4 million acres have burned so far in this year’s...
20 October, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
California, the Los Angeles Times recently reported, is building a “non-plastic future.” The state has outlawed or restricted single-use plastic bags, plastic drinking straws, and plastic cutlery. Future targets: plastic detergent bottles, unattached...
15 April, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
In Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revised budget released last week, he asked for $5 billion to shore up the state’s electrical grid, calling energy reliability “an endless struggle” in California. And endless will it ever be as long as policymakers continue to...
18 May, 2022 | Kerry Jackson
“If I am elected, the bald will grow thick hair.” Alas, I am not a candidate for anything, and so the bald will have to continue their suffering in silence. And, frankly, were I campaigning for a position of public trust, I would lose badly,......
11 October, 2010 | Benjamin Zycher
Last fall, The Babylon Bee posted a piece of biting satire that said the U-Haul company had named Gov. Gavin Newsom as its salesperson of the year for the third time in a row “after a record-setting sales quarter.” “Thanks to Gavin Newsom, literally ...
08 April, 2022 | Kerry Jackson
What happens when environmental fashion collides with a state’s desperate need for jobs and economic growth? That question will be put to the test when Californians vote November 2 on a ballot measure that would suspend the Golden State’s...
18 October, 2010 | Pacific Research Institute
Sacramento hasn’t yet outlawed gasoline- and diesel-driven automobiles. But it’s on the agenda. In the meantime, the state remains committed to former Gov. Jerry Brown’s goal of flooding California roads with zero-emissions vehicles. The transition, ...
06 February, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Key lawmakers are now promoting California’s energy and global warming policies as a model for the federal government and other States to follow. Thomas Tanton’s talk will review California’s policies and show that they have had significant costs as ...
31 March, 2008 | Pacific Research Institute
As California burns, Governor Gavin Newsom fiddles – with California’s climate change goals. In response to record-breaking wildfires, the Governor announced that California must accelerate its goal of reaching 100 percent green electricity by 2045. ...
15 October, 2020 | Daniel Kolkey
Recently, I gave a seminar presentation on my research on underperforming regular public schools in middle-class and more affluent neighborhoods in California, which allowed me to do some updates based on the most recent data. The seminar, sponsored ...
03 July, 2019 | Lance Izumi
When PRI pointed out a few years ago that California had the highest poverty rate in the nation, it’s fair to say it caught many by surprise. How could the biggest state economy in the country, brimming with tech, entertainment, and financial institu...
10 March, 2022 | Kerry Jackson
If approved by the California electorate in two weeks, Proposition 23 would suspend the implementation of the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (“AB32”) until the state unemployment rate declines to 5.5% or less for four con...
20 October, 2010 | Benjamin Zycher
While activists pushing to impose woke curricula in California’s classrooms claim that their ideological innovations are based on research, it turns out that these claims are really built on research quicksand. Take, for example, the proposed Califor...
21 April, 2022 | Lance Izumi
Last week, I had the chance to see the new movie “The Greatest Showman” about P.T. Barnum and how his dreams to set up his famous circus became a reality. Hugh Jackman and the very entertaining cast deliver a crowd-pleasing and empowering performanc...
12 January, 2018 | Tim Anaya
If someone tells you that you can get something for nothing, you might ask that person if that’s a subprime mortgage security he or she is selling — or whether they work for the California Air Resources Board. The board’s new “economic” study b...
02 October, 2008 | Thomas Tanton
On Friday, the Senate achieved the nearly-impossible and passed long-overdue tax reform legislation. While the legislation will surely be changed in the conference committee, whatever final legislation emerges will provide tax relief for many America...
04 December, 2017 | Tim Anaya
Outside a few conspiracy theorists, no one believes the COVID-19 lockdowns are a test run for eventually shuttering economic sectors to mitigate global warming. That said, the climate alarmists have surely been watching the public’s reaction, and the...
13 May, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
The flood of lousy legislation that has poured out of Sacramento for the last two decades or so truly astonishes in its volume. As fourth-rate as the lawmaking has been, though, nothing has been worse than Assembly Bill 5, an existential threat to bo...
02 December, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Following a 2020 summer of blackouts, the darkest since early this century, California is hoping that it can avoid replays in the future by investing in batteries. Big batteries. That are expensive. And come with significant energy storage limitation...
22 April, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
California has lived on the trope of being the hub of technology startups and innovation for decades. California’s economic success has long been touted and celebrated, none more so than the technology gold rush in the Bay Area. But despite Californi...
16 July, 2019 | Evan Harris
California’s runaway housing prices caused by a policy-created shortage of homes will be getting a tailwind in a little more than a year. Beginning on Jan. 1, 2020, every home built in the state, including condominiums and low-rise apartments, will h...
17 December, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
If there was any doubt about the economic success of state-mandated green programs, it was erased this week after a state Senate hearing about the future of alternate fuels. By the end of the four-hour session, it was clear that environmental special...
30 October, 2011 | Katy Grimes
With California just weeks away from a full re-opening, the state has sent out a small army of people who are “knocking on doors in order to get as many Californians vaccinated as possible,” the Sacramento Bee reported last week. Did no one think thi...
28 May, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
When it comes to saving the planet, some of the most popular weapons are policies to promote energy efficiency. As Tim Greeff, deputy legislative director of the League of Conservation Voters recently quipped, Efficiency is always the cheapest, clea...
12 November, 2013 | Kenneth Green
Every Californian wants to conserve energy and see cleaner air and water in the Golden State. But in their quest to safeguard the state’s environment for future generations, Sacramento policymakers have put in place an overzealous regulatory scheme t...
21 December, 2018 | Wayne Winegarden
When asked which factors influence their decisions about locating their businesses in California, the top concerns, according to a group of surveyed executives, are housing and real estate costs. No surprise, there. This state’s housing crunch is an ...
06 March, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, is one of the more active members of the California Legislature in terms of pursuing bills in hopes of easing the state’s housing crisis. But with that drive comes controversy. As he did last year, Wi...
25 April, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
The Sacramento Bee has come up with one of the more interesting lists we’ve seen lately. It’s a catalog, via video, of “some of the most left-leaning laws that have come out of Sacramento since the Democrats” — who are enjoying “their biggest l...
08 May, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
California’s coronavirus pandemic lockdown isn’t over. There was even a partial reversal of the state’s reopening on the first day of July when Gov. Gavin Newsom hit the “dimmer switch.” But not much can come between California and its plastic bag ba...
13 July, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
A virtually unlimited water supply sits just to the left of California, there for the taking, as William Mulholland might say. But this state has little appetite for useful projects. The ambitious and enterprising Mulholland wouldn’t recognize it. ...
04 May, 2022 | Kerry Jackson
Step one in any recovery program is to admit that the problem exists. And, make no mistake about it, California’s public pensions are addicted to debt. Solving this debt crisis requires political courage to implement fundamental reforms, which is why...
31 July, 2018 | Wayne Winegarden
The number of Californians certified for unemployment insurance is now at 1.6 million compared to October last year before the pandemic, when just 260,000 Californians received unemployment checks. Going into the holidays, a heart-breaking one in 10 ...
15 December, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
If there was one constant in the national media coverage of Super Tuesday, it was criticism of California’s election system. More than one observer commented on the fact that California’s heavy use of vote-by-mail ballots meant that hundreds of thous...
11 March, 2020 | Tim Anaya
In the coming weeks, nearly a million Californians will be returning to college campuses across the Golden State as in-person instruction resumes within the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems. Many students, f...
22 September, 2021 | M. Nolan Gray
California’s mandate to transition to an all-renewables electricity portfolio has always seemed like a fantasy. A just-released report “charting” the path to 100% clean power does nothing but confirm those suspicions. A joint summary released March 1...
24 March, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
Last week, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s office (LAO) released its fiscal outlook for 2021, which is traditionally the start of the debate over next year’s state budget. Unexpectedly, California finds itself sitting on a $26 billion windfall ...
23 November, 2020 | Tim Anaya
California is proving once again that it’s the worst place to do business in America. This time, the state is attempting to collect up to eight years of back taxes from Amazon sellers whose products were temporarily stored in Amazon warehouses throug...
26 March, 2019 | Rowena Itchon
It was just a matter of time. With cities around the state banning natural gas connections in new homes and commercial buildings, outlawing gas stations was bound to happen. And it has. Members of the Petaluma City Council have said there will be no ...
16 March, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
It comes as no surprise that a recent Gallup poll showed that Americans now believe that the biggest problem in the country are its politicians (29 percent), not the pandemic (22 percent). While tens of millions are frustratingly looking for a COVID-...
09 February, 2021 | Rowena Itchon
The final gavel fell last week on the 2020 legislative session. Cut short by seven weeks due to the coronavirus, lawmakers were forced to take a backseat to Gov. Newsom, who made use of his wide-ranging emergency powers to lock down businesses to st...
08 September, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
Anecdotes of rising incidents of crime across California are too numerous to mention these days. While California had a regimen of tough-on-crime public safety laws on the books as late as a decade ago, the past decade has ushered in a dramatic shift...
16 February, 2022 | Tim Anaya
As the Barack Obama administration takes the reins on energy policy, Californians such as Lawrence-Berkeley National Lab Director Steven Chu, ascending to Department of Energy secretary, and Rep. Henry Waxman, becoming chair of the House Energy &...
01 March, 2009 | Thomas Tanton
The coronavirus has hit Southern California especially hard. With businesses forced to close their doors to customers, many have shuttered for good unable to handle the sharp downturn in income. As a result, more than 3.6 million Californians filed...
18 June, 2020 | Wayne Winegarden
Last month, California achieved another first – first in the nation to implement statewide vote-by-mail due to the coronavirus pandemic. There will still be voting locations for those with disabilities or who need language help, but all active voters...
12 August, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
A recently-released UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) poll generated headlines before Thanksgiving for its finding that, if it came up for a vote again, California would again vote to approve the landmark property tax relief measure...
02 December, 2020 | Tim Anaya
In an election result that astonished the country, Californians voted down an initiative that would have returned racial preferences to state college admissions, hiring, and contracting. In a margin of 56% to 44%, one of the most diverse and deepest...
12 November, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
Last month, Californians may very well have begun the process of saving their state, reversing a move by the state legislature. They voted by a large margin via Proposition 22 to preserve the ability of people to pursue flexible working arrangements ...
14 January, 2021 | Bartlett Cleland
New York Times, August 3, 2009 Californians’ eagerness to battle global warming seems to be cooling a bit: The latest survey on the state’s environmental attitudes, released on Wednesday, showed that 47 percent consider the threat of global warming v...
30 July, 2009 | Felicity Barringer
People frequently argue that California should be the model for the nation’s energy use, because it has managed to keep per capita energy consumption flat over the past couple of decades. Not so fast, says Tom Tanton of the Pacific Research Ins...
04 April, 2008 | Pacific Research Institute
CalPERS and CalSTRS – the two largest public employee pension funds in both California and the nation –just announced their annual investment returns for the 2018-19 fiscal year. Once again, it’s not good news for California taxpayers. Both funds re...
12 August, 2019 | Tim Anaya
The COVID-19 recession has fueled volatility in the financial markets. Investment portfolios saw sharp drops in March and April but have rebounded recently as the economy opened up in some areas. This volatility has negatively impacted public pensio...
27 July, 2020 | Tim Anaya
When rumors began circulating in late February that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was about to issue an executive order to study options for a peripheral canal that would divert water from the Sacramento River around the delicate Sacramen...
15 April, 2008 | Amy Kaleita
According to a recent report by the Public Policy Institute of California, a startling one-in-four Californians now works remotely, with one-in-seven blending office and home-based work. And if you ask Californians what they prefer, a third say they ...
01 April, 2022 | M. Nolan Gray
The numbers are in on the cost of living in California, and it ain’t pretty: According to an analysis by the real estate listing service Zillow, as reported in the New York Times, home prices went up by a startling 12.3 percent between November 2020....
12 April, 2022 | M. Nolan Gray
Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2009 No: Alternatives Are Too Expensive The U.S. and Western Europe can point to a remarkable achievement over the past 40 years: significant reductions in air pollution with only a modest effect on our economic gro...
21 September, 2009 | Steven F. Hayward
The public got a look at the 2,702-page federal infrastructure bill on Sunday, giving the country more details on how the Biden administration will tackle broadband infrastructure investment. The $65 billion being doled out to states for broadband co...
05 August, 2021 | Evan Harris
Last week, PRI held its inaugural “California Ideas in Action” policy conference in Sacramento. A capacity crowd came together near the State Capitol for a half-day conference exploring how free-market ideas can address California’s most pressing cha...
07 March, 2019 | Tim Anaya
SACRAMENTO – California sea lions sometimes swim some 90 miles up the Sacramento River, passing the state capitol on their journey. A local fisherman, Mr. Larry Legans, has been accused of shooting a sea lion for consuming the fish he caught. Mr. Leg...
12 May, 2010 | K. Lloyd Billingsley
If you haven’t been living under a rock, you know that California is currently in the grips of a worsening housing affordability crisis. I take that back—if you’re living under a rock, you’re probably acutely aware of this fact. Before the pandemic, ...
08 June, 2021 | M. Nolan Gray
In 2001 due to a job change, I moved from Baltimore to San Francisco. It was the Dot.com Boom, and like everyone else who was moving to the City by the Bay, I was desperately hunting for an apartment. Back then, it was common for......
14 February, 2022 | Rowena Itchon
Speaker Pelosi and her allies in Congress received significant pollical pushback for using the COVID-19 crisis to enact their budget wish list in the $2 billion “phase 3” stimulus. Recently, Rowena Itchon wrote on Right by the Bay about tens of milli...
28 April, 2020 | Tim Anaya
Oh Canada, here I come! Well, not really. At least not permanently. This week I’m in Montreal and Quebec City for summer vacation. Before leaving, I decided to check out how the U.S. compares economically to Canada, and there’s no better source than ...
30 July, 2018 | Rowena Itchon
Rightly or wrongly, Global Warming offers disaster for our planet. Countering it has become a consuming concern. Emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) focus on carbon dioxide. “A reduction in carbon emissions has become an end in itself,” observes Bjor...
01 July, 2008 | Natalie Sirkin
In a review of the claims made by the Western Climate Initiative, the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University in Boston identified several flaws made by the seven-state consortium, calling into question claimed cost savings ranging between $11.4 ...
23 March, 2009 | Thomas Tanton
Encore Online (Wilmington, NC), June 29, 2009 While most Americans are distracted by the situation in Iran and the vital current healthcare debates, Barack Obama and his friends in Congress are attempting to rush through one of the most draconian rea...
29 June, 2009 | Pacific Research Institute
Download the PDF When the Legislature declared a moratorium on cities enacting soda taxes, it felt like a win for freedom and a pushback of interventionism. But the busybodies never give up and they plow a fertile field in California, which has no ri...
26 July, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD THE PDF As if they didn’t have enough to shocks in their lives already, Californians recently woke up to find that Governor Newsom and the Legislature had defunded schoolchildren in the state budget. But the children are now fighting back a...
20 August, 2020 | Lance Izumi
Download the Brief Introduction Pacific Gas and Electric of San Francisco began in October 2019 a series of electricity blackouts called “public safety power shutoffs.” The objective was to prevent its equipment from starting wildfires during hot, dr...
07 November, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
It is no coincidence that California’s housing prices began to diverge from the rest of the country in 1970 – the very year that the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) was enacted. According to California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst,...
20 February, 2019 | Daniel Kolkey
Download the PDF In late May, a panel of federal judges resurrected a couple of previously dismissed climate change lawsuits filed by San Francisco and Oakland, and also allowed six other community-based suits to go forward. The plaintiffs aren’t con...
11 June, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD THE PDF One of the several responses to the death of George Floyd has been activists’ demand to defund police departments. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was one of the first mayors to surrender to the mob and pledge that he would move a......
06 July, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
Download the PDF California’s “bullet” train to nowhere keeps going — nowhere. Unless tearing down a bridge just to rebuild it is somewhere. Construction of an overpass near Fresno was scrapped late last year—yes, we’re learning about this just...
27 June, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD PDF California is the most fun state in the country. So says the website WalletHub. It can’t be fun for everyone, though. Many would say living in California is a miserable existence. If the standard for fun is measured by the vast opportuni...
18 July, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Download the PDF California, not West Virginia, not Mississippi, has the highest poverty rate among the 50 states. Blame policymakers who, rather than solving the problem, have inflamed it. In fact, California officials have gone out of their way to ...
20 September, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD THE PDF Keeping track of the many informative lists in which California ranks at or near the bottom is a wearying task. It is also discouraging. This state, once the envy of all others, is losing its luster because policymakers continue to t...
06 November, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD THE BRIEF California lawmakers won’t give up on their crusade to force everyone in the state into electric cars (before eventually removing us out of our cars altogether). That electric vehicles neither sell nor perform up to reasonable expe...
01 October, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD PDF Even before it was a state, California was the New World’s new world. Everything that the Western Hemisphere promised was condensed and amplified in what became the 31st state. Not only was it arguably the greatest land of opportunity in...
12 May, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD THE PDF It was inevitable. California lawmakers’ assault on choice continues in 2019. The plastic-bag ban already in effect is not enough to satisfy their appetite for micromanaging others’ lives. After successfully outlawing single-use plas...
25 March, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Download the PDF The rest of the country wasn’t surprised when California recently considered becoming the first state in the country to tax text messages. It almost seems as if there is a group of unelected bureaucrats that does nothing but cloister...
16 January, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
One of the Legislature’s jobs in the final month of the 2021 session is to make a high-speed rail funding decision. The question is how many more billions will be wasted this year on a project that sensible lawmakers would have abandoned long ago....
31 August, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD THE PDF Jerry Brown left office in January as one of the most popular governors in California history. He also left successor Gavin Newsom with a few headaches. Among the more prominent unresolved issues are the high-speed rail project, the ...
15 May, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Download the Brief California is destined for yet another energy crisis, which, like the drought that’s been scorching the state, will be man-made. Shortages can be avoided, but that will require lawmakers to think in ways that few have engaged in in...
10 January, 2017 | Kerry Jackson
Download the PDF They are not as unpopular in California as President Trump is, but private prisons are becoming a preferred target of politicians. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has a large blue-plate special of problems to solve, is at the forefront of a c...
18 April, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD THE PDF In Gov. Jerry Brown’s California, all is nearly well. He led off his State of the State address with an assurance that “California is prospering.” He bragged about jobs created and personal income growth on his watch, and congratulat...
07 February, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
Download PDF Originally published in PRI’s Impact magazine, Summer 2018 An article that posits California as the model for the country’s future recently picked up some traffic, thanks to an affirming tweet from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who called it ...
30 August, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
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28 January, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD PDF Not too terribly long ago, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said that to meet demand, each year the state needed 100,000 new housing units in addition to the 100,000 to 140,000 that are expected to be built annually, an impossibility in ...
17 June, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
Download the Brief Sacramento’s response to President Trump’s Inauguration Day was to release the latest version of its heavy-handed plan to stop global warming. The state’s updated approach to environmental policy will be about as effective in stopp...
21 February, 2017 | Kerry Jackson
READ THE PDF For a large majority of Americans, their home is their most valuable asset, while also serving as a major portion of their retirement portfolio. For others, owning their home provides a source of stability and community for themselves an...
20 June, 2019 | Damon Dunn
This legislative session, California could take an important step toward creating a true water market to meet the needs of cities, farmers and the environment with the Open and Transparent Water Data Act (Assembly Bill 1755). It’s hard to solve a pro...
13 May, 2016 | Arthur Laffer
Open the PDF California lawmakers have had several chances to handcuff payday lenders, and in each instance, they were either unable to, or chose not to. Naturally, some see this as a series of missed opportunities. We understand the reaction. But th...
14 August, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD PDF Two waves have rolled through California in 2021. One so hot that high temperature records were set throughout the state. The other so chilling that stores have shortened their hours and even closed altogether to avoid it. By now, the vi...
23 July, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD THE PDF Flippy, California’s and the world’s first automated fast-food grill master, has been fired. But after a few tweaks, he will be rehired. The same can’t be said about the humans who will lose their jobs to robots due to the state’s mi...
14 May, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD THE REPORT The following is a speech given by Lance Izumi, senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute, to The Parent Union on August 19, 2021. There is so much going on in education, both in California and ...
07 September, 2021 | Lance Izumi
Nearly two decades ago, before “ban everything” fever was sweeping through California, San Francisco committed to eliminating a staple of human progress: the modern landfill. The idea, concocted in 2002, was to reach a “zero waste” existence by 2020,...
12 December, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD THE PDF There is currently a trend toward misunderstanding or misrepresenting science, and it starts early. A grade-school teacher asked the class whether a whale is a fish or a mammal. One boy raised his hand and offered, “Let’s take a vote...
06 February, 2019 | Robert Wager and Henry I. Miller
Los Angeles County has adopted a “sustainability” program that officials expect “to enhance the well-being of every community in the county while reducing damage to the natural environment and adapting to the changing climate.” This is considered sma...
28 August, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
DOWNLOAD THE PDF California is now the first state to require plastic beverage containers to contain a minimum content of recycled material. A step forward? Hardly. The bill, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 24, the day after he issued an ...
12 October, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
The backlash over California’s Assembly Bill 5, legislation that robs workers of their freedom, was likely not expected by lawmakers. They’re accustomed to an electorate that agreeably goes along with whatever policies they impose, no matter how inva...
10 February, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
Download the PDF California has declared itself a sanctuary state, where illegal immigrants are sheltered from federal law. The urge to “resist” President Trump runs so red hot in California that Gov. Jerry Brown pardoned two immigrants from Cambodia...
17 January, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
Housing affordability is once again at the top of Sacramento Democrats’ policy agenda this session. Several bills have already been proposed to try and bring down state housing costs. Addressing the state’s housing crisis is now running into conflic...
23 January, 2020 | Tim Anaya
San Francisco—Many policies aiming to “green” the American car culture may do just the opposite, according to a new study from the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a California-based free market think tank. Car-tastrophe: How federal policy can help...
14 February, 2011 | Amy Kaleita
This past week, Politico reported that our fellow think tankers (albeit left-leaning) at the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute were forming unions. I assumed that these think tanks were breaking ground, but it appears that they’re just p...
20 April, 2021 | Rowena Itchon
Drought: Transbay Pipeline, Desalination Plant Could Boost Marin’s Dwindling Water Supply By John Ramos CORTE MADERA (KPIX) — Communities across the state are desperately searching for ways to make their dwindling water supplies last. In Marin County...
22 June, 2021 | Pacific Research Institute
Data privacy is one of the defining public policy debates of the new decade. As other countries push data privacy regulation heralded as global standards, California is headed in the other direction with the rollout of the state’s Consumer Privacy Ac...
24 February, 2020 | Evan Harris
Unions have long had government-protected privileges that no other institution or organization has. They hold monopolies as exclusive collective bargaining units; can collect dues before paychecks are even issued (government is the only other institu...
05 December, 2017 | Kerry Jackson
As the United States tries to reduce emissions and become more energy independent, energy efficiency will likely play a major part in achieving these goals. But should the government be incentivizing consumers to lead more efficient lifestyles? Durin...
08 April, 2008 | Pacific Research Institute
When I was a child, my father took me fishing on the Detroit River, where we caught plenty of perch and silver bass, but no whitefish. I might catch one in 2008 because whitefish are reproducing in the Detroit River for the first time since......
28 April, 2008 | K. Lloyd Billingsley
This year is the 40th anniversary of the Cuyahoga River fire, an event that has come to symbolize environmental degradation. The current condition of the river symbolizes something else worth recalling in the wake of Earth Day — environmental i...
27 May, 2009 | K. Lloyd Billingsley
Earth Day, which has been observed every April 22 since 1970, was established to educate the public about air and water pollution. Nothing wrong with that. No one wants to live on a dirty planet. But shouldn’t there be another dimension? How about ...
18 April, 2022 | Kerry Jackson
This week marks a milestone for PRI’s weekly “Next Round” podcast as we celebrate our 100th episode. When we first started the podcast in July 2017, our podcast had a different name, “Another Round with PRI” (I won’t go into the story of why we......
25 June, 2019 | Tim Anaya
As we get ready to celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, we’re also preparing for an overload of turkey, pumpkin pie, and relatives. Thanksgiving is about more than getting a food coma. It’s about getting together with your loved ones and giving thank...
20 November, 2017 | Tim Anaya
That sound you heard on the Fourth of July was not bands playing “God Bless America” or other patriotic songs. No, it was people complaining on social media about fireworks being set off in their neighborhoods. Where I live in Sacramento, you can buy...
09 July, 2018 | Tim Anaya
On this Labor Day, we salute California’s hard-working men and women with a much-deserved three-day weekend while enjoying the unofficial end of the summer season. This Labor Day, we celebrate the fact that California’s public employees who don’t wan...
29 August, 2019 | Tim Anaya
We’ve recently said that Elon Musk’s tunnel-boring project could be the potential foundation of a hyperloop transportation system. But as is too often the case in California, a reasonable objective has been sidelined by outrage. Musk has abandoned th...
10 December, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
The state Senate held a joint informational hearing last month that, on the surface, looked to be a step forward for those who believe the California Environmental Quality Act needs reform, if not a top-to-bottom overhaul. But apparently the hearing ...
10 April, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
Recently, the Southern California Association of Governments voted on new housing development goals for the region for the coming decade. Its vote requires cities and counties to make plans to zone for up to 1.34 million new homes by the end of the ...
22 April, 2021 | Tim Anaya
By Daniel Kolkey It’s no coincidence that California’s housing prices began to diverge from the rest of the country in 1970 – the very year that the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) was enacted. According to California’s nonpartisan Legi...
13 February, 2019 | Pacific Research Institute
Amid much fanfare, Major League Soccer last week announced that Sacramento has been awarded the 29th MLS franchise. Attention now turns to building a new $252 million stadium in the downtown Sacramento railyards before the team’s launch in 2022. Unf...
28 October, 2019 | Tim Anaya
In what has come to be called Climategate, emails hacked from a server at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were leaked online in November 2009. These emails among prominent climate scientists included evidence that some ha...
19 January, 2010 | Amy Kaleita
If you’re a foodie like me, one of the worst parts of the Covid-19 pandemic has been not being able to go out to a great restaurant for lunch or dinner. It’s been sad to see many of my favorite restaurants here in Sacramento –......
17 February, 2021 | Tim Anaya
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is no crime fighter. He’s among the new breed of decline-to-prosecute prosecutors whose elections have been funded by George Soros (and his political machine). The uber-wealthy agitator is determined to us...
04 February, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
Tax cuts are the “fertilizer applied to the roots of the economy.” That’s not Arthur Laffer talking, but China Premier Li Keqiang. Last month, China’s Finance Ministry announced that it would cut income taxes for small companies from 25 percent to 2...
03 May, 2022 | Rowena Itchon
It made headlines around the world last week when China purportedly announced a historic commitment to reduce its “carbon intensity” – the greenhouse gases it emits per unit of GDP. “China unveiled firm targets,” The Gua...
02 December, 2009 | Neil Reynolds
Following the opening segment where Tim Anaya and Rowena Itchon discuss their “favorite” new California laws of 2022, listen to PRI’s recent webinar conversation with Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy and PRI board member. PRI senior fellow Steven ...
04 January, 2022 | Pacific Research Institute
Political bias continues to increase in America’s classrooms and curricula. Giving parents school-choice tools is the only real solution. In the current school year, there have been disturbing cases across the country of teachers imposing their anti...
20 June, 2018 | Lance Izumi
Let’s take a quick look at a few of the environmental issues making news today, which include whether old coral formations in Mexico show a “catastrophic” rise in sea levels 12,000 years ago, and if so, what it might mean today. And more: Is consumpt...
16 April, 2009 | Judy Lowe
California’s relatively mild climate means that, on average, our electricity bills are a smaller portion of our incomes relative to the rest of the country. But that doesn’t protect us from the increased costs of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a...
21 November, 2016 | Kerry Jackson
If you spend more than 10 percent of your income on electricity, natural gas, and other household energy costs, then you are afflicted by energy poverty. It is a tragedy that forces some families to choose between keeping the lights on, or putting fo...
16 November, 2016 | Wayne Winegarden
Energy poverty is a growing problem in San Diego’s working-class communities, and across California. If you spend more than 10 percent of your income on electricity, natural gas, and other household energy costs, then you are afflicted by energy pove...
04 November, 2016 | Wayne Winegarden
More and more West Virginians are living in energy poverty today. If you spend more than 10 percent of your income on electricity, natural gas, and other household energy costs, then you are afflicted by energy poverty. It is a tragedy that forces so...
12 December, 2016 | Wayne Winegarden
Yesterday the Assembly Appropriations Committee was scheduled to consider AB 2058, “Reducing Plastic Bags,” by Lloyd E. Levine, a Sherman Oaks Democrat, which imposes on consumers a recycling “fee” of $.25 per bag. The committee, and all Californians...
23 May, 2008 | K. Lloyd Billingsley
SACRAMENTO – Tomorrow the Assembly Appropriations Committee considers AB 2058, “Reducing Plastic Bags,” by Lloyd E. Levine, a Sherman Oaks Democrat, which imposes on consumers a recycling “fee” of $.25 per bag. The committee, and all Californians, sh...
21 May, 2008 | K. Lloyd Billingsley
Last June, then-Gov. Jerry Brown and Sacramento’s political leaders dropped a proposed tax on drinking water. But Gov. Gavin Newsom, following the California Way, apparently aims to bring it back. Newsom, the Los Angeles Times reported “has embraced ...
26 February, 2019 | Kerry Jackson
If the recent PPIC debate is any indication, expect this year’s race for State Superintendent of Public Instruction to be a close race with clear differences between the two candidates. Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, wins the contest for most...
29 August, 2018 | Tim Anaya
Organizers said the goal of the event, dubbed “Focus the Nation,” was to move past preaching to the green choir, to reach a captive audience of students in many fields who might not otherwise tune in to climate change issues.” The L...
01 February, 2008 | Amy Kaleita
If the ‘progressives’ get their way on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it will be ordinary Americans who suffer, says John Entine Let’s call it the black box syndrome: making revolutionary changes or new products without any real handle on what ha...
16 May, 2008 | Jon Entine
Along the Sonoma County coast, CalTrans is relocating a stretch of Highway 1 farther inland in response to the ocean taking out about a foot per year of the cliffs overlooking the Pacific. This concept is often referred to as managed retreat, where e...
06 May, 2022 | Kerry Jackson
(1) The Discount Rate. Economists give wildly different estimates of the “social cost of carbon” and hence the “optimal” tax on an additional unit of emissions. These differences are not primarily due to the assumptions about climate systems or human...
21 July, 2009 | Robert P. Murphy
A recent study of paleoclimate, the results of which appear in the August issue of Nature Geoscience, finds that today’s climate models do not accurately predict the most similar previous episode of climate warming in the geologic record. California ...
18 August, 2009 | Amy Kaleita
And so I asked the question on the minds of millions of my fellow concerned citizens: How can I get my snout into this trough? Easy: I buy a small car qualifying for the $4,500, and keep it for a few months until the cash-for-clunkers......
04 August, 2009 | Benjamin Zycher
The lights may soon go out in the Washington, DC metro area and other parts of the country due to environmental activist opposition to coal-fired power plants, energy analysts are warning. “Electric power has already become painfully expensive ...
01 April, 2008 | Pacific Research Institute
First it was too hot, then it was too icy, now it causes cancer. Thanks to a judge’s ruling last week, California coffee lovers may soon be seeing dire warnings about cancer risks in their favorite coffeehouses. But is concern for cancer really what...
06 April, 2018 | Rowena Itchon
Recently, headline after headline trumpeted that the College Board, which administers the SAT, eliminated students’ so-called “adversity score,” which was supposed to inform college admissions officials about the challenges students face or don’t fac...
05 September, 2019 | Lance Izumi
State Analysis Paints Rosy Picture of Impact of CLEAR on Economy, Environment New analysis from the non-partisan Pacific Research Institute, a California-based free-market think tank, finds that Colorado’s proposed low emission vehicle standards woul...
22 July, 2019 | Pacific Research Institute
Colorado officials are painting a rosy picture of the impact on the economy and the environment from its low emission vehicle standards’ known as the Colorado Low Emission Automobile Regulation, or CLEAR. State officials prepared an initial economic ...
07 August, 2019 | Wayne Winegarden
The March primary election is a month away. While we are already being bombarded with television advertising for the Democratic presidential race, there hasn’t been much discussion of ballot measures. That’s because in 2011, Democrats in the Legisla...
03 February, 2020 | Tim Anaya
Back in 2012, I wrote a book entitled Obama’s Education Takeover that warned about the harmful impact that the Common Core national education standards would have on student achievement, especially in California. Now a just released study confirms m...
12 May, 2020 | Lance Izumi
Texas’ energy debacle during this past winter has led to a great deal of introspection regarding which energy market structure is the most appropriate. Most analysts would agree that energy market regulations should facilitate access to affordable an...
07 June, 2021 | Wayne Winegarden
A new study commissioned by Governor John Kitzhaber underscores the need for competitive, rather than restrictive, markets for wood and timber products harvested in Oregon. Existing building policies for sustainable wood products stifle, rather than ...
23 September, 2014 | Wayne Winegarden
Thanks to a stormy winter, California’s long drought is over says state government. But California’s man-made drought will continue as long as Sacramento misallocates our water supply. Maybe it’s time to appeal to a higher but distant authority. When...
08 August, 2017 | Kerry Jackson
The battle over the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, and student athlete compensation has been brewing since California passed the Fair Pay to Play Act in 2019. Michigan became the sixth state to pass a similar bill. Meanwhile, the ...
04 March, 2021 | Evan Harris
Grocery shopping in California isn’t what it used to be. Traditionally, customers carried their items away in paper bags provided by the store through an unspoken, but well-established and always understood, contract between seller and buyer. But the...
28 September, 2016 | Kerry Jackson
Lecture from the Alworth Center for the Study of Peace and Justice, at The College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, Minnesota. Conventional Farming & Environmental Protection – by Amy Kaleita, Ph.D. Kaleita, who has a Ph.D. in agricultural engi...
21 January, 2009 | Pacific Research Institute
Washington Post, October 1, 2009 Real Clear Politics, October 1, 2009 ReporterNews (Abilene, TX), September 30, 2009 Plateau in Temperatures Adds Difficulty to Task Of Reaching a Solution — New York Times, Sept. 23 WASHINGTON — In this he...
01 October, 2009 | George Will
Tom Tanton [Senior Fellow, Energy Studies, Pacific Research Institute]: “The Copenhagen Climate Conference has concluded. The fanfare is over and world leaders have little to show for it. President Obama left the conference with hope that the c...
04 January, 2010 | Thomas Tanton
One of the intriguing reports to come out of the coronavirus pandemic is the partisan divide — not just among lawmakers — but even rank and file voters. Recent polls have consistently shown that Republicans are less concerned about the co...
14 April, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
Year to date, the Dow Index of the U.S.’s 30 largest companies is down 14 percent; the S&P 500, which tracks 500 large-cap companies, is down 8 percent; and the NASDAQ, an electronic system that trades many of the world’s fastest growing companie...
21 May, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
Even as House members consider themselves non-essential workers (they’ve decided to vote from home), it hasn’t stopped some lawmakers from coming up with bad ideas for the next stimulus package, including relief for states and municipalities with pre...
14 May, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
Roughly 30 million people have filed for unemployment since the coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on the nation’s economy. Economists estimate that the unemployment rate now ranges from 15 to 20 percent – numbers not seen since the Great Depression...
05 May, 2020 | Rowena Itchon
The sight of criminals running free in our streets gets the blood up. But while the looting and violence, as ugly as they are, will decelerate, there’s a relatively invisible hand of crime that has the potential to cause harm on a long-term basis. At...
08 June, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
Allusions to George Orwell’s 1984 are often overdone, but the applicability is simply too great to ignore. After all, how else do you refer to a proposed $2.7 trillion infrastructure package that spends only 16-cents on the dollar for infrastructure?...
15 April, 2021 | Wayne Winegarden
According to the report, in recent months corn ethanol producers have faced a number of financial setbacks, including at least one highly visible bankruptcy. Although greater use of ethanol is mandated by federal law, the industry is suffering from o...
24 February, 2009 | Thomas Tanton
On Sept. 17, the California Air Resources Board released an economic analysis of their own implementation scheme for AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. The analysis said, “not only will the economy grow by a similar amount as we move to...
16 October, 2008 | Thomas Tanton
Businesses in California could use some good news, but one wonders when — and sometimes if — any will ever come. At the same time, there seems to be no end to the bad news, at least when government authorities are involved. The most recen...
22 May, 2018 | Kerry Jackson
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has told House Democrats that earmarks are coming back in 2021. According to Punchbowl News, which originally broke the scoop on earmarks, Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Sen. Patrick Leahy – Congress’ lead appropriators – are...
25 February, 2021 | Evan Harris
By Wayne Winegarden and Celine Bookin Billionaire investor Mark Cuban’s pharmaceutical company, the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, is hoping to disrupt the pharmaceutical benefit management (PBM) industry with a new venture that seeks to address ...
18 November, 2021 | Pacific Research Institute
With nearly 40 million people and more than 70,000 farms taking up nearly 25 million acres, California is always thirsty. It is, as well, mostly dry. Deserts make up one-fourth of the state and semi-arid land occupies up at least that much, if not mo...
15 January, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
When talking about the management of California’s power grid, people’s eyelids will surely grow heavy before you finish making your point. But how California’s power grid is managed is incredibly important. Think back to 2001 and California’s electr...
21 March, 2018 | Tim Anaya
Regular Right by the Bay readers know that I have written often about the Legislature’s efforts in recent years to change California’s elections rules for political advantage. The latest of these is a bill enacted in the final weeks of the most impor...
20 February, 2020 | Tim Anaya
Ever since Democrats won control of the U.S. House of Representatives, many have speculated whether President Trump and Democrats be able to make a deal on something big. With Democrats saying that they aren’t afraid to use their newfound-subpoena po...
28 November, 2018 | Tim Anaya
Last month, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger held an international climate summit to show local governments in other countries that greenhouse gas emissions can be cut, to the degree he wants, without harming the economy. This comes as the finan...
10 December, 2008 | Thomas Tanton
The U.S. Supreme Court recently rebuffed environmentalists in their bid to get the judiciary to intervene in the global-warming controversy by invoking the old common law of nuisance, as though global warming could be solved through an injunction. Bu...
28 July, 2011 | Steven F. Hayward
A three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that California truckers who own and operate their own rigs have to be classified as employees rather than independent contractors. Will the 70,000 California drivers affected by the...
04 May, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
Tax hikes, especially in the state known for its extraordinarily heavy tax burden, should not be easily enacted. Yet the California Supreme Court has made the job much easier. California law previously required a two-thirds majority for the passage o...
01 September, 2017 | Kerry Jackson
Given a choice, would someone caught shoplifting rather make a voluntary arrangement with the victim to pay for their crime, or become involved with the police and courts? That’s a pointless question in California. There is no longer a choice. The ch...
12 September, 2017 | Kerry Jackson
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on utilities companies being sued for emitting carbon dioxide. That the case has reached the Supreme Court indicates how confused our judicial system is on the subject of climate, but i...
21 December, 2010 | Amy Kaleita
Through the brilliance of scientists, the ingenuity of the life sciences industry, and the mobilization of taxpayer dollars, COVID-19 vaccines have been developed and distributed in record time. By now, all American adults who want to be vaccinated h...
16 December, 2021 | Roger Bate
Media reports that some California businesses have gone underground during the pandemic lockdown should surprise no one. When politicians ban activities, both those accepted by society and those considered less honorable, they drive them into black m...
26 January, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
In her March 25 Forbes editorial, Sally Pipes documented how the private sector is rising to the health challenges of the coronavirus. Whether it is Moderna launching clinical trials for a COVID-19 vaccine or Gilead Sciences investigating whether one...
21 April, 2020 | Wayne Winegarden
It is basic Economics 101. Competitive markets create better outcomes than monopolists. Monopolists restrict supply and charge higher prices. Dynamically, monopolists face fewer incentives to create new products or improve how their products are made...
10 June, 2013 | Wayne Winegarden
In a recent article – “We fact checked the most common claims about San Francisco crime”, the San Francisco Chronicle outrageously attempted to defend the state of crime in San Francisco as well as the recall facing District Attorney Chesa Boudin. ...
21 January, 2022 | Steve Smith
It’s been recently said that with Chesa Boudin as district attorney, San Francisco has two public defenders: Manohar Raju, the appointed public defender, and Boudin, the former public defender who critics might say acts more like a legal advocate for...
15 April, 2020 | Kerry Jackson
California seems to have become a plunderers’ paradise. Thieves have moved on from shoplifting with large garbage bags at drug stores to violent smash-and-run raids on retailers, some of them during the middle of the day. Neiman-Marcus, Nordstrom, Sa...
01 December, 2021 | Kerry Jackson
On January 1st, 2021, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid gifted the American people with a new rule requiring price transparency in healthcare. The federal rule requires hospitals to publish cash prices, prices with insurance plans, and minimum/ma...
20 September, 2021 | McKenzie Richards
A new extensive report has just been released by one of our Blog Contributors: Tom Tanton. This report titled Top Ten Energy Myths offers insight into and facts on the myths that are permeated upon the public by the mainstream media. As an energy sup...
04 November, 2009 | Pacific Research Institute
Earlier this year, the American Medical Association (AMA) reported that in 2020, physician-owned medical practices are no longer in the majority. For the first time in American health care, over half of all U.S. physicians work for a hospital or heal...
20 December, 2021 | McKenzie Richards
Much has been written about perhaps the wildest last night of the legislative session ever. For those who weren’t paying attention, all but one Republican senator was quarantined when Sen. Brian Jones tested positive for COVID-19 a few days prior, fo...
07 September, 2020 | Tim Anaya
